To listen well is to think well,—the hearing ear must be attended by the alert mind, eager to seize upon incoming sensations and weave them into a garland of thought.
M. G. B.
Words, however well constructed originally, are always tending, like coins, to have their inscription worn off by passing from hand to hand; and the only possible mode of reviving it is to be ever stamping it afresh by living in the habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words that express them.
J. S. Mill.
XIV
THE STREAM OF THOUGHT IN LISTENING AND READING
A suggestive dialogue.
Two men engaged in speculative pursuits met after one had published a book. Let us speak of them as A and B.
A: I have just read your new book. Many things in it please me very much, but in it you say so and so, with which I do not find myself in full accord.
B: I say nothing of the kind in that book.